camp, and there so effectually pleaded his cause before the Macedonians, that he turned them all over to him; and, when the news of Craterus' death came, he took the advantage of that grief and anger with which he saw them actuated for it, as to cause them, by a public decree, to declare Eumenes, and fifty others of that party by name, enemies to the Macedonian state; and, by the same decree, Antipater and Antigonus were appointed to make war against them as such. And whereas all were inclined to have conferred on him the guardianship of the kings, in the room of Perdiccas, he rather chose to keep where he was, recommending Pithon and Aridæus to this charge, and by his interest it was that they were appointed to it. The former had been a noted commander in the army of Alexander through all his wars, and followed the party of Perdiccas till his late misfortune at the Nile; when, in dislike of his conduct, he deserted from him, and went over to Ptolemy. But as to the other, no mention is made of him, till, on the death of Alexander, he was appointed to take care of his funeral; for which having made great preparations, at length, after two years time spent herein, he carried the corpse in great solemnity from Babylon into Egypt, and there deposited it in the city of Memphis; from whence it was afterwards translated to Alexandria. A prophecy having been given out, that, wherever Alexander should be buried, that place of all others should be the most happy and prosperous, this put the chief governours of provinces upon a strife which of them should have the body of this deceased prince, each of them desiring to make the chief seat of his government happy by it. Perdiccas, out of love to his country, would have carried it to Egæ in Macedonia, the usual burying-place of the Macedonian kings, and others elsewhere. But Ptolemy prevailed to have it brought into Egypt; where Aridæus having carried it not long before the death of Perdiccas, Ptolemy, in order to gratify him for it, procured that he was chosen into this office. But Eurydice, the wife of king Aridæus (now called Philip,) putting in to have all affairs managed according to her direction, and the

Macedonians favouring her in this pretence, they were so tired with the impertinency of this woman, that, when they had led back the army to Triparadisus in Syria, they there resigned their charge, and it was conferred wholly on Antipater; who thereon made a new partition of the provinces of the empire, wherein he excluded all that had been of the party of Perdiccas and Eumenes, and restored all of the other party that had been dispossessed. In this new distribution Seleucus had the government of Babylon conferred on him; who, from this beginning, afterwards grew up to be the greatest of Alexander's successors, as will hereafter be related. Antipater, having thus settled affairs, sent Antigonus to make war upon Eumenes, and then returned into Macedonia, leaving his son Cassander, with Antigonus, in the command of general of the horse in his army, to be a spy upon him. This year Jaddua, the high priest of the Jews, being dead, Onias, his son, succeeded him in that office, and lived in it twenty-one years.

An. 320.
Philip 4.

S

t

Early the next spring, Antigonus marched out of his winter quarters against Eumenes; and, at Orcynium, in Cappadocia, it came to a battle between them, in which Eumenes lost the victory, with eight thousand of his men. This was caused by the treachery of Apollonides, one of the principal commanders of his horse, who, being corrupted by Antigonus, deserted to him in the battle. However, the traitor escaped not the punishment which he deserved; for Eumenes, having taken him, 'caused him immediately to be hanged for it. After this, Eumenes shifted from place to place, till at length he was shut up in the castle of Nora, which was situated in the confines of Cappadocia and Lycaonia, where he endured the siege of a whole year.

In the mean time," Ptolemy, finding how convenient Syria, Phoenicia, and Judea, lay for him, both for the defence of Egypt, as well as for the invading from

s Joseph. Antiq. lib. 11, c. 8. Chron. Alex. Euseb. in Chronice.

t Plutarch. et Corn. Nepos in Eumene, Diodor Sic. lib. 18.

u Diodor. Sic. lib. 18. Plutarch. in Demet. Joseph. Antiq. lib. 12, c. 1. Appian. in Syriacis. Pausan, in Atticis.

thence the island of Cyprus, which he had an eye upon, resolved to make himself master of these provinces. They were, in the first partition of the provinces of the empire, granted to Laomedon, the Mytelenian, one of Alexander's captains, and had been confirmed to him also in that second partition which was made by Antipater at Triparadisus; and he had accordingly, from the death of Alexander to this time, been possessed of them, without any interruption or disturbance. Ptolemy, at first, thought to have bought him out of them, and offered him vast sums for this purpose; but, not prevailing this way, he sent Nicanor, one of his captains, with an army into Syria, against him, while he with a fleet invaded Phoenicia. Nicanor, having vanquished Laomedon in battle, and taken him prisoner, thereon seized all the inland country, and Ptolemy had the same success on the maritime; so that, hereby he made himself master of all those provinces; and Antipater being returned into Macedonia, and Antigonus otherwise engaged against Eumenes, neither of them could hinder this enlargement of his power, though both misliked it.

But when all other parts of the country, after this vanquishing of Laomedon, readily yielded to Ptolemy, * the Jews alone refused to submit to this new master, and for some time stood out against him. For, having a just sense of the oath which they had sworn to the former governour, they were truly tenacious of the faith which they had thereby engaged to him; and therefore, till overpowered by force, would comply with nothing that was contrary to it. Whereon Ptolemy marched into Judea, and laid siege to Jerusalem. The place, being strongly fortified both by art and nature, might have held out long against him, but that the Jews had then such a superstitious notion for the keeping of their sabbath, that they thought it a breach of their law concerning it, even to defend themselves on that day; which Ptolemy having observed, made choice of their sabbath to storm the place; and then took it in the assault, because none of them would, on that day, defend their walls against him. Josephus,

Joseph. Antiq. lib, 12, c. 1. & contra Apion. lib. 1.

being unwilling to expose his nation to the contempt of the Greeks for so ridiculous a folly, tells the story otherwise in his Antiquities, as if Ptolemy were admitted into Jerusalem upon articles of composition, and seized the place in breach of them; buty other historians, and those whom he himself quotes elsewhere, give that other account of it which I have here related, and which I think was the truth of the matter; for it appears from the book of the Maccabees, that till Mattathias, and those with him, made a decree to the contrary, it was the stated opinion of the Jews, that they were to do nothing on the sabbath day, even for the saving of their own lives, against those that fought against them.

a

When Ptolemy had thus made himself master of Jerusalem, and all Judea, he did at first deal very hardly with the inhabitants; for he carried above one hundred thousand of them captives into Egypt. But afterwards reflecting on the steadiness with which they adhered to the fealty they had sworn to their former princes and governours, he thought them the properest for the highest trust; and therefore, having chosen out of them thirty thousand of the strongest and best qualified for military service, he committed to them the garrisoning and keeping of those towns which were of the greatest importance to him to have well maintained, and appointed the rest, at their desire, to be with them in the same places, to administer all necessaries to them. And whereas he had lately brought under him Cyrene and Libya, he placed several of them there; and from them were descended the Cyrenian Jews, of whom was Jason, who wrote the history of the Maccabees in five books (of which the second book of Maccabees, which we now have, is an abridgment,) and of whom also was Simon that bore Christ's cross, at his crucifixion, and others that are mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. Antipater being worn out with age, e died in Macedonia, and, at his death, appointed Polysperchon, who was the oldest of Alexan

An. 319. Philip 5.

d

y Agatharcides ap. Joseph. lib. 1, contra Apion. Vide etiam Aristeam.

z 1 Maccab. ii, 41.

b 2 Maccab. i.

d Acts ii, 10; vi, 9.

a Joseph. Antiq. lib. 12. c 1. Aristeas.

c Matt. xxvii, 32. Mark xv, 21. Luke xxiii, 26. e Diodor. Sic. lib. 18. Plutarch. in Phocione.

der's captains then remaining, to be the guardian of the kings, and governour of Macedonia, in his stead; which Cassander resented with great indignation: for he could not bear that his father should prefer any one before him in this trust; and therefore he forthwith set himself to form a party against the new guardian, and seized as many places as he could within the verge of his government, both in Greece and Macedon, and purposed no less than the dispossessing him of all the rest. And for the better carrying on of all this design, he sent to Ptolemy and Antigonus, to engage them to be on his side in it; and they both encouraged him to proceed therein, but with a view only to their own interest. The aim of the former was, to secure himself in the provinces he had gotten; and that of the other was, to possess himself of all Asia; and they thought, if the Macedonians were embarrassed by a war at home, they might both of them, with the greater ease, obtain their designs. For no sooner was Antipater dead, but Antigonus, finding himself possessed of the greatest power of all Alexander's captains then surviving, formed a project of making himself master of all: for he was left by Antipater generalissimo of all the Lesser Asia, with full authority over all the provinces in it, and had then under his command an army of seventy thousand men, besides thirty elephants; which was a force which no other power in the empire could then resist, and therefore he resolved to seize the whole. In order hereto, his first step was to make a reform in all the governments of the provinces within the verge of his power, by putting out all such governours as he had no confidence in, and placing others in their steads who wholly depended on him. And accordingly he drove Aridæus out of his government of the Lesser Phrygia and Hellespont, and Clitus out of that of Lydia, and so proceeded to do the same in all the other provinces and cities of the Lesser Asia. But his greatest difficulty was to master Eumenes, whose valour, wisdom, and military skill, made him more formidable to him than all the rest, though he had then been for a whole year shut up and besieged by him in the cas